Dynamics CRM 2013 – formerly codename: “Orion”

If you haven’t heard yet, there have been some recent disclosures in the Dynamics CRM world – you may recall the next version of Dynamics CRM was code named Orion – it now has officially been named “Dynamics CRM 2013.” So, you want to know all the juicy details on CRM 2013? Stay tuned, we’ll post pointers to new information as it becomes available – but for now here are some tidbits:

How do rumors get started? No Microsoft source has said that the term "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013" in any way replaces or is equivalent to "Orion". Those terms are not even on the same logical level. "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013" is a major product version release, on the same level as "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" and "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0". "Orion" is just a bag of planned features, on the same level as "Polaris", "December 2012 Service Update", or "CRM Anywhere" (remember that one)?

Hi "Wonderer" no rumors here my friend 🙂 This information is drawn from the official Microsoft press release listed in the above links: http://bit.ly/12jYw2B. Orion was the code name for the next major release of CRM and was used a lot publically. The official name for the next version is now: "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013" and will be also applied to CRM Online as an update titled "Dynamics CRM Online Fall '13" update. Reference paragraph #2 in the press release – "Available both online as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall '13 and on-premises as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, this major release will deliver more personal experiences to sales, marketing and customer care professionals." Also, if you have ideas for other blog topics we'd appreciate them. Thanks for the question and as always, thanks for reading!

With Microsoft's increasing push towards the cloud, I have a question regarding the future of reporting in CRM Online: will FetchXML be extended to have greater feature parity with SQL reporting or could the database backend be re-architected to allow some sort of sandboxed but flexible and user-generated SQL reporting to be offered in future in a way that would not pose security and performance risks the avoidance of which are the apparent rationale for the reporting limitations in CRM Online? The face that only FetchXML is available and SQL reporting is not allowed are a big deal and not at all obvious, in some cases until it's effectively too late (we got rid of our on-premises CRM and moved to cloud without being made aware of this severe shortcoming). Does MS have any plans for improving on this situation for future releases of CRM Online?

Hi @thejoecarroll – thanks for your comment. We don't necessarily have any announcements around fetchxml and 2013 today I would anticipate a focus to add more to FetchXml in the future for the reasons you list above. Once 2013 is more available in the public for testing and more complete our team will likely have exposure to any new features regarding FetchXML that we can share on the blog. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!

Have you heard how online customers are to test this upgrade? I have multiple customers that have an online instance setup for QA and an online instance set up for Prod. It would be nice to have the chance to test this release (as big as it is) prior to Microsoft automatically deploying it to a production environment. Or will this work as UR12 where they deploy the update but the company has the ability to manually update the system's major functionality via the resource center?

I would echo the query asked by 'Testing' on 22 July; I would be keen to know what is planned for the online roll-out as we have customers who use add-ons etc. that also have customisation to the ribbon etc. and these would need to be fully tested before updating their instance. If for example the configuration toll failed to launch from the ribbon that would be an issue.

@Testing & @markh – thanks for your questions, I wish I had more details to respond to you with but at this point I do not. I can tell you that as soon as our team is informed of any such offering or feature we'll let you know. Since this is a major version upgrade there will be some flexibility in the upgrade timing. Other CRM Online partners and customers have been blogging about the invites for the upgrade one such example is CRM MVP Jerry Weinstock who has posted screenshots showing what it looks like to receive a 90 day advance notice and the ability to reschedule in the admin portal: http://www.crminnovation.com/…/orion-release-update-notifications